March./99
Every once and a while my dad will tease his grandchildren, by calling the truck the child is playing with, a car. The child would correct him saying, "No Grandpa, it is a truck." However with todlers he can confuse them and they will start calling the truck, a car. In the same way, the church has conditioned our thinking redefining simple Biblical terms. Take the concept of the old being gone:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 2Co.5:17
Since I was a child I was taught that the old is not really gone and the new has not really come- its positional. Yet I cannot find scriptures which say that the old is gone positional or symbolically:
I have been crucified with Christ
and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Ga.2:20 note Co.3:3)We may not understand that Christ lives in me while I am seated in the heavenlies (Eph.2:6 Jn.14:20) but we must not negate the word of God- rather accept it as truth. For the Bible tells us:
Those
who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature (flesh KJV) with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. (Ga.5:24-25 note Ro.8:9)Some Christians are taught that the old self will always be there but does the Bible teach that? Rather:
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. (Ro.6:6-7, Eph.4:22-24)
The Bible tells us that our old self was crucified with Him; it was of our former way of life. Some Christians are taught that their experience will be no different from the Old Testament people as they are taught to live by law:
…you also died to the law through the body of Christ
, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. (Ro.7:4 note Ga.2:19)To live by or under the Law: "Do this and you will live"; prevents us from experiencing grace: "You have received life therefore walk in it". Death speaks of finality, only after which rebirth is possible:
Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us….." (Ro.6:1-3 note Ro.6:14-15)
Many Christians won’t know they died to sin because they have not been taught. They will continue to live under the principles of this world:
Since you died
with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: "Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? (Col.2:20-21 note Ga.5:4-5)We need to teach that a Christians have died to sin, whether selfishness, legalism or worldliness.
If you died and I sat you in a chair. And a member of the opposite sex tried to seduce you, could you sin. Of course not, you not only died to the world but the world also died to you.
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. …what counts is a new creation. Ga 6:14-15
Well is it a truck or is it a car? Is the old dead or is it alive? Once a grandchild responded to their grandpa, "My dad says it is truck!" Are you a new creation and is the old gone? My Father says the old is gone and the new has come- for his children that settles it.